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I'm just scanning through the manuscript of my new book one last time before I upload it to Lulu.

By the time you read this, it should be available to purchase. All 600-odd pages of it. Now why did I class this as a mini-book? I suppose I didn't expect the recipes to get so out of hand. My guess was 250. It ended up over 370. Even more than Scotland! volume II.

Anyway, here' the recipe:

One of the weirder appearances in the Barclay Perkins records are what appear to be brews for Watney.

It has the same name as one of their own beers – XLK. But that name wasn’t unique to Barclay Perkins. Truman also had a beer with the same name. The cheap and cheerful Bitter that, unlike their other Pale Ales, was brewed in London rather than Burton.

As it’s different in grist and gravity from either of Barclay Perkins own XLKs, I can only assume that this was being brewed for Watney. Maybe Barclay Perkins had spare capacity. As breweries had were pegged as a percentage of their 1914 output, I’m not sure why they would waste some of that brewing for someone else.

The recipe is quite similar to Barclay’s own XLK. That’s not a surprise, seeing as they were both brewed for the same London market. Its gravity falls about exactly between those of Barclay’s draught and bottled versions.

The hopping is a bit different from Barclay’s, though the hops are all still English: Kent (1914 CS, 1915 CS, 1916 and; Worcester (1915 CS) dry hops.